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After a little break for the summer, I am back with more Sunday retro sewing loveliness.

Today we have a stylish project from one of my stack of 1977 Golden Hands. This jerkin has been made from brightly coloured diamonds of leather and suede. I like the tag line of “Look lively in leather and suede”, as you would indeed stand out from the crowd in this.

The instructions for making it are under the photo inside. This is one of my loves of seventies craft books, none of the step by steps we take for granted these days, there is an assumption the reader already sews so the project is there to inspire. Its says to buy a pattern, then to glue the shapes onto a heavy cotton background, already cut to shape, and finally zig zag stitch over the edges.

Simple eh! I can remember my mum had a suede waistcoat from the early seventies in her wardrobe that I swiped for a few seventies themed parties when I was at college, so they must have been the in thing.

There are a few pages devoted to leatherwork. I like the opening paragraph on page 2 of the issue (part 87/Vol.6) it says:

“One of the oldest of crafts, leather work feel into obscurity at the end of the nineteen-thirties, when pride in craftsmanship gave way to mass production. Thonging, as a means of joining two pieces of leather, was out and fashion demanded that craftsmanship did not show, and that the article bore as close a resemblance to the machine-made as possible”.

This reference to handcrafts trying to look machine made is still very current to makers today.